About 500,000 deaf and hearing people speak American Sign Language in North America, is Will Smith one of them?
Will Smith does not know sign language. As his family are all hearing, Will has not had any exposure to American Sign Language despite its prevalence in North America and its growing prevalence in film and television.
Despite the fact that Will Smith does not know any sign language, he still joins almost half the world in knowing another language and more specifically, 437 million people, in knowing Spanish.
American Sign Language (ASL)
American Sign Language (ASL) is a complete language that has the same linguistic properties as spoken languages. This means that it has its own communicative properties and grammar. The language is expressed through hand and face movements to form words and sentences. It is called American Sign Language as there is no universal sign language. American Sign Language is used both in The United States and Canada not only by deaf people, but many hearing people have learned it as well to help facilitate conversation.
Though Will Smith has been in many movies and television shows, none have featured any sign language, so it is likely that Will has never had any exposure to it. That has not stopped fans from creating their own American Sign Language content. This fan signed the theme song to Will’s hit television show The Fresh Prince of Belair:
Will Smith’s Upbringing
Will Smith’s parents, Willard Carroll Smith Sr. and Caroline Bright, his three younger siblings and his immediate family are all hearing. Thus, it is likely that Will was never exposed to deaf culture or American Sign Language. His parents, him and his siblings all grew up in Wynnefield, Pennsylvania which is a middle-class suburb in West Philadelphia where English is the majority language.
They all went to a private school in their area that was taught in English and there was likely little to no second language exposure. Will states that his favorite subject was mathematics and he even went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for engineering. So, it wasn’t until he moved to Los Angeles that he had proper exposure to another language, Spanish.
